Journal of Literature and Science

Welcome to the Journal of Literature and Science. The JLS was founded in 2007, and produced its first issue at the very end of that year. It is hosted by the University of Glamorgan’s Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science, which provides its web and publishing expertise. Its editorial policies, and aims are entirely independent, and conceived by the editor and advisory board. The journal’s first, and present, Editor-in-Chief is Martin Willis. The extensive Advisory Board includes active scholars of literature and science from around the world. The JLS is published in digital format (presently annually), is entirely open access, and requires no subscription fee. It remains, however, a professionally produced, edited, and peer-reviewed academic journal. Under our committment to open-access publishing, the copyright of all articles remains with the author.

The journal is dedicated to the publication of academic essays of 6-9 thousand words on the subject of literature and science, broadly defined. Essays on the major forms of literary and artistic endeavour are welcome (the novel, short fiction, poetry, drama, periodical literature, visual art, sculpture, radio, film and television). The journal encourages submissions from all periods of literary and artistic history since the Scientific Revolution; from the Renaissance to the present day. The journal also encourages a broad definition of ‘science’: encapsulating both the history and philosophy of science and those sciences regarded as either mainstream or marginal within their own, or our, historical moment. However, the journal does not generally publish work on the social sciences. Within these confines, essays submitted to the journal may focus on the literary and scientific productions of any nation or group.

Submission of Articles

All articles should be interdisciplinary in focus, offering an original view of both the literary or artistic subject matter and the science or sciences under consideration. While articles on individual examples of literary and artistic production are welcomed, these should also seek to show the wider significance of their analyses and interpretations. The journal does not publish essays focused exclusively on literature or art, or exclusively on the history and philosophy of science.

Article Reviews

An innovative section of the journal follows the articles described above. The Article Reviews are reviews of journal articles that have been published within the last calendar year. It was the opinion of the JLS’s editors that book reviews were already published by many of the academic journals who might be expected to give space to new works in literature and science, and that the Journal of Literature and Science might therefore offer something different yet complementary. It is therefore JLS policy to review articles on literature and science, or relevant articles in other fields, published in academic journals within a twelve to eighteen month period preceding the publication of any issue. Academic journal articles are central to the dissemination of research in literature and science and very often offer the very best examples of the work of individual scholars, or the field of scholarship as a whole. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the article reviews here in the JLS will, over time, build an archive of discussion and comment on the most interesting and provocative journal articles within the field of literature and science.

I hope you find the Journal of Literature and Science a profitable read. The editorial team would welcome any comments and suggestions and would encourage the submission of articles and article reviews for consideration for publication in future JLS issues.